Breakfast and Coffee

Above, a tray of Medialunas.

 

Porteños generally eat a very light breakfast. Two or three pieces of toast or medialunas and a coffee is common. Medialunas are essentially a brioche shaped in the form of a crescent, like a croissant, and glazed (image above).  When you order medialunas, the mozo (waiter or moza, waitress) will ask “manteca or graso?”  There are two types of medialunas:  Those made with butter (manteca) or shortening (graso).  Personally, I can’t stand the medialunas de graso.  Tip:  Ask the mozo to warm the medialunas. 

Two or three eggs, sausage (or bacon), a pancake & hash browns is unheard of in BA.  We gringos, however, do get a taste for eggs now and again, so we head to Florentina for the Americano breakfast (pictured below).  I don’t know how they prepare these scrambled eggs, but they are divine.  Creamy.  The juice, as in most BA cafe’s, is freshly squeezed.

A word about coffee: They don't brew/serve coffee like cafe’s do in the U.S. Coffee is prepared in an espresso machine. It’s stronger and richer than what we are accustomed to in the U.S.  We love it!  I usually order café doble.  i.e. double the standard portion, otherwise it's really a small amount. If you do want a small coffee, it’s simply called un café).  Carolyn orders a café doble con leche (double size coffee with milk) or cortado (café with a little milk). Cream or half & half is not used in coffee either. In fact, we could not find that they have cream at all. They use milk or steamed milk.

 

Above, the Americano breakfast at Florentina (corner of Soler and Malabia in Palermo Soho).

Notice in the previous image that the moza delivered breakfast with salt (only).  I always seem to forget to ask for butter (manteca) and pepper (pimienta).  The butter not only looks beautiful, it tastes better than the butter we get in the U.S.

Coffee at A Nos Amours, corner of Gorriti and Aráoz.

 

Although not pictured, A Nos Amours has real croissants and pain au chocolat.

 

Facturas are pastries.  Starting at the bottom and going clockwise, the long ones are called churos (con dulce), next is a medialuna con chocolat (there are four), but I don’t know the names of the other two facturas.

La Colonia

La Colonia is a small bodegone with a parilla near Casa Palermo.  The owner was born in the building.  When we first started lunching here, the clientele was almost exclusively taxi drivers. See the photo of a typical lunch crowd of drivers in 2005; everyone in the photo is a taxi driver except the owner (guy in the blue shirt, standing) and the moza (waitress).  The food was simple, tasty and inexpensive (i.e. about $20 pesos for two, including wine).  On our first visit, in September of 2005, it was clear that they were not accustomed to seeing gringos and this status caused some attention.  But times have changed with adjacent Palermo Soho bursting at the seams. Soho clientele have been spilling over Scalabrini Ortiz in search, I imagine, of authenticity and the owner has decided to take advantage of the situation.  He revised the menu, offering a wider selection, albeit at a much higher price.  Of course, the taxi drivers can’t afford the higher prices and no longer frequent La Colonia.  Nevertheless, for tourists, it’s still perfectly affordable and the food is good.  On this last visit, the people at the next table were 30-something Canadians and nobody was interested that they were speaking English.  In addition to grilled meat, there is a full menu and they have good pizza. Location:  Julián Alvarez 1674 esq. Gascon.

 

View Full Album

Gaucho Gil

Throughout Argentina there are hundreds of roadside shrines memorializing Guacho Gil, a legendary cowboy whose existence is undocumented and continues to be debated.  The legend is that Antonio Gil was a Robin Hood-like outlaw who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.  Eventually he was caught and hanged by the authorities.  Before his hanging he assured everyone that he would survive in spirit and continue to help the poor.  His devotees, to this day, erect shrines along highways and byways of Argentine, leaving offerings to his memory, in the hope that he will perform a personal miracle on their behalf.  i.e. help them recover from an illness, pass an exam, win the heart of another, etc.  The shrines are characteristically decorated with red ribbons, candles, offerings (such as bottles of beer, booze, etc.) and various objects.

Above, a typical roadside Gaucho Gil shrine.  This one along a dirt road several kilometers outside of San Antonio de Areco. Some are much smaller and others very elaborate.  Keep an eye open and you will notice that there are also some in Buenos Aires.

The Celery Seed Adventure

Sub-title:  Grocery shopping in Buenos Aires

Tuesday, March 24, 2009. 

We are in Buenos Aires and it has been marvelous.  It's in the upper 80's and sunny every day so far (we arrived Saturday morning). The ten-day forecast ranges from sunny to partly cloudy and in the upper 70's to upper 80's. We've been very laid back. Just riding our bikes into new neighborhoods; exploring. Yesterday, the bulk of the day was taken up shopping for ingredients to prepare dinner for our friends Adriana and Carlos tonight. We shopped yesterday because today is a holiday here and we're not sure what stores will be open. Much of what we needed to buy involved a search because the ingredients are either not common here or have to be bought in a specialty shop. One example is celery seed. First of all, grocery stores and supermarkets generally don't carry herbs and spices. You have to go to a store called a dietetica.

  A small dietetica

These are small shops that specialize in herbs and spices, as well as natural products and alternative medicines. We visited several dieteticas and were surprised that none carried celery seed. At the start of search we were hampered by the fact that we only knew the word for celery, in Spanish (apio), but the word for seed. Our Franklin translator only has the verb "seed," but not the noun. The woman in the first dietetica assured me that the verduleria (vegetable store) next door would have it. (Also called a fruteria-verduleria). The green grocer rummaged around and finally offered me nice bunch of celery, which I politely declined. And the search resumed.

    A typical fruteria-verdularia

While I was running into the stores, Carolyn guarded our bikes. At one point she struck up a conversation with two school girls who spoke English (I don't know how this happened). This was fortuitous because they told us the word for "seed." Semilla. Yippee! Now we could do some shopping! Semillas de apio!

  The helpfull schoolgirl

We stopped at two more dieteticas. The additional knowledge it didn't help, other than it gave the appearance that I knew what was looking for, which simply encouraged the people in the dieteticas to offer me alternatives to consider. i.e. alternatives from the perspective of alternative medicine purposes. I don't think that works for recipes, but perhaps I'm wrong. Substituting basil for celery might result in an entirely different but perfectly tasty dish.

In desperation, we resorted to looking at the COTO (a supermarket). Surprisingly, they did offer an assortment of condiments, herbs and spices in a section of imported foods. They had, for example, cayenne, which we had already found previously in a dietetica. (More on cayenne below). They also had an interesting assortment of condiments from the U.S. that I have never seen in the U.S., as well as various Asian stuff, but no celery seed.

Carolyn spied the awning and tables of Don Julio at the end of the block. We decided to postpone the search in favor of lunch. After my brain had been degreased with a couple of glasses of wine, I asked the waiter if he knew where some semillas de apio might be had. He offered to ask the cook and returned with an out of the box thinking type answer: Go to the the end of the block and around the corner there is a garden center. They sell seeds at the garden center. Eureka!

  Eureka!  Celery seeds!

Last night our friend Silvia had us over for dinner. We related search. When I mentioned my search for small red potatoes, which I eventually found in a she smiled and explained that they are not normally found in the supermarket or even the verduleria. Nope. They only sell the large white potatoes. She told us that you have to keep an eye out for one of the Bolivian women that claim a spot on the sidewalk to sell their small stock of vegetables, herbs and spices. These women often have the "Bolivian potatoes." i.e. Small red potatoes.

This morning we discovered that somehow we managed to lose the precious package of celery seeds. It probably fell out of the bicycle basket.  Tuesday morning Tito suggested a store called KLeR, which sells spices, but it was closed for the holiday.  He led me to a flower stand on the corner, which I thought would be an unlikely place, but the vendor apologetically explained that he usually had celery seeds, but was out of stock due to the constant demand.  Demand?  He explained, with a wink, that celery seed is a natural alternative to Viagra.  Later Carolyn and I went to the big garden center on Scalabrini Ortiz, Vivero Mario and found they had plenty of celery seed in stock.  Finally we had the 1/2 teaspoon that we needed for the salad dressing!  See the recipe HERE.

 

More on shopping for groceries . . .

Another search involved potatoes.  Small red potatoes.  I went to at least a half dozen verdulerias and the COTO but the only thing I could find were large white potatoes.  Eventually I stumbled across a small verduleria that had what were small dirt-encrusted potatoes.  Not red, but at least they were small.  The next day Tito confirmed, with a broad smile, that the common potato found in stores and verdulerias are large white potatoes, "with dirt or without . . . as you like."  Our friend Silvia noted that near all the large supermarkets one will find one or more Bolivian ladies sitting along the sidewalk selling vegetables, fruit, herbs and spices.  These ladies typically have small potatoes (papas bolivianas).  But as for red potatoes . . . we have not see any.

  Potatoes . . . with dirt and without

Spicy food is generally not in the repertoire of Argentine cooks.  Indeed, we once found Tabasco sauce in the supermarket and were amused to find that it was marked "MILD."  Surprisingly, we had less trouble finding cayenne pepper than celery seed.  The second or third verduliara had them.  Unlike ground cayenne pepper in the U.S., the peppers are ground by hand and include the seeds.  See photo below.

  A bag of ground cayenne pepper

Delivery

Virtually every store delivers.  Supermarkets, cafes, restaurants, electronics . . . you name it; they deliver. Even a cup of coffee. We often see elderly people leaving the grocery store, accompanied by a delivery boy.  In a dense urban environment, where cars are not used for shopping, delivery is an essential service.

Museo Xul Solar

Museo de Xul Solar is often overlooked by visitors to Buenos Aires, which is an unfortunate oversight.

Xul Solar was a man of many talents and interests . . . a painter, sculptor, inventor of languages, and writer. A small museum, in the building in which he lived, is architecturally interesting, in addition to an extensive collection.

Don't miss this gem of a museum:
Museo de Xul Solar
Laprida 1212